The Copywriter Club Podcast

Tori Autumn is our guest for the 317th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tori is an email strategist and copywriter who helps coaches and course creators grow their businesses through fervent messaging. In this episode, she spills how she's quickly grown her copywriting business and what she's had to shed to make it happen. Here's what you'll find: How Tori went from broadcast journalism to self-love coaching to copywriting. What to do when jobs don’t go the way you planned them to. The balance between nonprofit work and owning a copywriting business – practical tips for pursuing multiple passions. How she built her business to $20k months in a matter of a year. Why she invests her time in networking and the benefits it's given her business. The REAL benefits of 5-figure months. How The Accelerator and Think Tank helped her business grow and flourish. How to shift your mindset as you’re growing your business. Copywriting vs. strategy – what’s the difference and how will it help you position yourself as the expert? How she went from writing email sequences in a couple of weeks to a couple of days. Why you need to let go of toxic clients for yourself and for their benefit. Choices and decisions. Which one is more powerful? Should we have seasons for connection calls? Referral systems – are they a good idea? The mistakes marketers are making today and how to solve them. How to begin building extra streams of income. Tune into the episode by pressing play or reading the transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Tori's website  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 184 Episode 261 Full Transcript: Kira Hug:  You know how most copywriters jump into copywriting as a side hustle while working their full-time job? And they can't wait to build up the business enough to ditch their 9 to 5 and focus 100% on their copywriting business. While today's guest for the 317th episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast isn't the type of copywriter to follow the traditional path. That's right. Tori Autumn, an email strategist and copywriter, has gone from zero to achieving the coveted 20K a month by shedding toxic clients, seasonal networking, launching new products, specifically templates, and balancing a full-time job with a growing copywriting business. And the best part, she's done it all over the last year. Here's Tori's story and all the lessons learned along the way. You don't want to miss this episode. But before we get into our interview, let me introduce my very, very special co-host this week. It's me. So you are stuck with me, just me. This week I decided to hijack the show and give Rob the boot. So here we are. Feels a little strange without a co-host, but we'll make do. So first up, today's episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank Mastermind. So why should you join this Mastermind this month? I mean, you could join any mastermind, and you could join any month, so why this one right now? Well, we have a team of coaches in this mastermind, so not only do you have access to Rob and me to provide feedback, strategic direction, private coaching as you move through your business and achieve your goals, but you also have access to a team of coaches. So you have access to a mindset coach, a systems and growth coach, and our newest coach that you have access to when you join the Think Tank is a visibility coach. Those are three core areas that we know copywriters struggle with the most, so we wanted to bring in coaches who have specialized in those areas to help the copywriters in our Mastermind. So again, you don't just have access to Rob, to me, although you'll get more of us than you probably even want in your business, but you also have access to these incredible coaches that are going to help you scale your business, learn how to work with a team if you want to build a team, how to build your systems and processes, how to focus on your visibility, which we know can feel very uncomfortable, but how to actually show up in a big way. And, of course, you know how to do it all and shift your mindset, which is the trickiest part. So that's a good reason to join this mastermind. And why right now? Well, we are adding a couple of new members this month before the holiday craziness, and we're inviting our newest members to join our Think Tank Mastermind this January in New Orleans for our in-person retreat. And we're so excited that we can finally get back to in-person retreats and over a couple of days in January. So if you know that you are ready to be in an intimate room of brilliant writers, then this might be the right time to apply, jump on a call with us, learn a little bit more about the Think Tank, and see if it's a good fit for you. You can find more information in our show notes. All right, that's enough for me. Let's jump into the interview with Tori. Tori Autumn:  So last year ... Well, I'll go back up to when I started my business in 2019. So I went to school for life coaching. After working in PR, losing my job, I read the book, You're a Badass. And I said, "Maybe I should do life coaching." So I went to school for that and then niched into self-love coaching. And then, over the pandemic, I found it really, really hard to get my group coaching program running for my self-love coaching business. But I've gotten so many compliments on my emails, like the newsletters and the promo emails, and people were asking me to write them for them, so I eventually just started doing that. And I said, "Wait, I can actually make money from doing this? I don't have to do this as a gift or as a hobby." So I started deep diving into copywriting last year, and I reached out into my network of copywriters that I've known that I've been in different email programs with and things like that. And from there, I niched down to email and website copy. Rob Marsh:  So before you got into copywriting, let's dive into some of the stuff that you were doing before that because you've got some pretty deep experience in PR and marketing and that kind of stuff too. Talk a little bit about that. Tori Autumn:  Yeah, so before I did that, I actually went to school for broadcast journalism, so I worked in the news industry for almost five years, and then I transitioned into PR. So in the news industry, I was doing production work for C-Span. And so, that was cool, but I also felt like I was bored ,and I wanted more, and I just didn't really want to be in a political environment. So I started doing public relations, and that didn't go well, but I learned a lot of skills. I learned how to effectively be a PR strategist, but the actual job was really toxic. So I lost my job, got fired, and then I realized, you know what, I never want to be in a situation where that happens again. So that's what kicked off my entrepreneurial journey. And now I do copywriting full-time along with a full-time position I have advocating for people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, and I really enjoy that. Kira Hug:  Okay, because you mentioned it, you got fired from your job. How do you rebound after that? Because I imagine that can be, even if it's a toxic situation ... well, especially if it's a toxic situation, it can really feel like a blow to your ego. And so, what did you do to feel better and move forward after that situation? Tori Autumn:  Yeah, even though it was a very challenging job to have, I did feel a lot of grief. I felt more so annoyed that I was so excited about the pay with that job and the skills that I was learning, all the things that came with it. And I was just there for quite a really short time and just felt really rejected. But also, I knew that that wasn't really what I wanted to be doing 10, 20 years from now. Aside from the skills I learned, I know that wasn't ... it was so fast-paced and so disorganized that there was just no way that I could keep up with that. So I really just started diving into reading books after that. I was unemployed, and I said, "Well, other than applying for jobs ..." which took quite a while to find another position that I ended up just staying very shortly. I had a stint in IT for a little bit. I've done quite a few things, and now I feel like, yes, this is where I want to stay." But I just started reading a lot of books. And also, it helped when other people told me about their stories about getting laid off or getting fired. It also made me feel like rejection is redirection. Rejection is protection, all those things. I felt that way because sooner or later, that PR agency is no longer here. It dissolved. So it made me feel like, whoa, I'm a terrible employee. I got out of taking it super personally and saw that that was just not a place I was meant to be for the long term. Rob Marsh:  So before we get into what you do as a copywriter, I'm also interested in what you do to advocate for the mentally challenged. My own brother was mentally challenged before he passed away, and I'm just curious what you do there and just the impact that you're having on those people. Tori Autumn:  Yeah, so I help with the criminal justice division of this nonprofit that I work with. And so there are many cases that we get where people in ... the police workforce don't necessarily know the signs or symptoms of someone who has intellectual developmental disabilities, and sometimes we often ... people with IDD, they may agree to a crime that they didn't even do because they're afraid, or they may get pulled over by police and flee the scene because they have sensory overload with all the different lights and someone yelling. So there's so many things.